Friday, November 16, 2018

Written by Jon Williams

Now going into its third weekend in theatres, moviegoers
still can’t stop talking about Bohemian
Rhapsody. The film has made over $110 million at the box office to date,
already making it one of the biggest musical biopics of all time. Detailing the
story of Freddie Mercury and Queen from the band’s formation in 1970 through
their astonishing 1985 Live Aid performance, the movie has spurred a resurgence
of interest in Queen’s timeless music.

Band members Brian May and Roger Taylor were performing
together in the band Smile until Mercury joined them in 1970, when they took
the name Queen. When bassist John Deacon joined in 1971, the lineup was
complete. In 1973, they released their eponymous debut album, Queen,
which drew some critical acclaim but otherwise garnered little attention. That
started to change with the follow-up, 1974’s Queen
II, which contained their first U.K. hit, “Seven Seas of Rhye,” a
finished version of an instrumental track from the first album. That album’s
cover art would become perhaps the most iconic image associated with the band.
Their second album of 1974, Sheer
Heart Attack, and its lead single “Killer Queen” helped to establish
their classic sound, and brought them success in North America as well.

From there it was a rocket ship to the top as Queen produced
one radio smash after another. Their fourth album, 1975’s A
Night at the Opera, was the most expensive ever produced at the time. It
contained the epic six-minute style mishmash “Bohemian Rhapsody,” which gave
the movie its name. Their next album, the sequel A
Day at the Races, spawned the hit “Somebody to Love.” And then came
1977’s News
of the World, and with it, perhaps their most well-known, biggest hit:
the anthem “We Will Rock You” and the accompanying ballad “We Are the
Champions.” But the hits didn’t stop there—far from it. The 1978 album Jazz
included such songs as “Fat Bottomed Girls,” “Bicycle Race,” and “Don’t Stop Me
Now,” while 1980’s The
Game brought “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” and “Another One Bites
the Dust.” Then they showed off their versatility by finishing off 1980 with
the soundtrack
for the sci-fi movie Flash
Gordon.

One of Queen’s big hits happened spontaneously, as David
Bowie came into their studio to sing backup on a track—that performance was
nixed, but while he was there, they wrote and recorded “Under Pressure.” That
appears on their 1982 album Hot
Space. The different sound on the album was a source of contention
between Mercury and the rest of the band, and they took a break from performing
live while they worked on a new album and pursued side projects. They came back
with The
Works in 1984, containing “Radio Ga Ga” and “I Want to Break Free.” In
July of 1985 came their celebrated performance at the benefit concert Live
Aid, which ranked in a 2005 poll as the greatest rock performance of all
time. Energized, they recorded the 1986 album A
Kind of Magic. That was followed by their final tour with Mercury,
where they played to record crowds. In 1989 they released The
Miracle, and followed it in 1991 with Innuendo.
Mercury, who had been ill for some time, passed away later that year.
Nevertheless, the band had enough leftover material, including songs recorded
during previous album sessions, for Made
in Heaven, released in 1995.

The movie’s popularity has brought Queen’s music back to the
forefront—the soundtrack
is at #3 on the current Billboard albums chart, the highest position for the
band in 38 years, since The Game hit
#1 in 1980. It has also brought the song “Bohemian Rhapsody” back into the Hot
100, making it just the second song to chart in three different decades (in
addition to its original 1976 release, it also charted in 1992 due to its
inclusion in the movie Wayne’s
World). It speaks to the fact that Queen’s music is timeless, and your
patrons will be looking for it now as they learn about the band and its amazing
lead singer due to the incredibly popular movie. Use the links above to find
their studio albums, and SmartBrowse the band’s name on our website to find
their acclaimed live albums and video of their performances. And for patrons
who want to dig more into their history, check out the audiobook Queen
Unseen by Peter Hince.

Friday, October 19, 2018

Written by Jon Williams

There were no new episodes of Stranger
Things this year, with Season 3 of the popular show not coming
until 2019. Television lovers looking for their fix of a creepy show to binge
watch to get them in the Halloween spirit, however, are in luck anyway. The
latest sensation is The Haunting of Hill
House, a loose adaptation of Shirley
Jackson’s classic 1959 horror novel, bringing it into the modern day
and spreading it across ten episodes exploring the lives of a family who spent
a fateful summer in the titular house and the rest of their lives dealing with
the aftermath. Show creator Mike Flanagan is well known to horror fans, with
movies like Oculus
and Ouija:
Origin of Evil to his credit. He also recently adapted the Stephen
King novel Gerald’s
Game, and is working on the author’s Doctor
Sleep (coming in 2020) as well.

This is also a great time to promote other classic horror
fiction to your patrons. That begins, of course, with Mary Shelley’s 1823 novel
Frankenstein.
This story of a creature cobbled together and animated by a young scientist has
been adapted any number of times over the years, perhaps most famously in
1931 with Boris Karloff as the monster. The most recent, 2015’s Victor
Frankenstein, starred James McAvoy as Dr. Frankenstein and
Daniel Radcliffe as his assistant Igor. Starting in 2005, bestselling novelist Dean
Koontz (an author whose work horror fans would do well to explore)
put out a five-book
series bringing Frankenstein and his monster into modern times.

And of course, it’s impossible to mention Frankenstein without also mentioning Dracula,
the seminal vampire novel published in 1897 by Bram Stoker. Like Frankenstein, Dracula too received a 1931
adaptation, with Bela Lugosi in the starring role, although an
earlier, unlicensed adaptation, Nosferatu,
rivals that version as the most famous. The vampire novel is one of the most
enduring horror traditions, with iconic tales like Richard
Matheson’sI
Am Legend and Anne
Rice’sInterview
with the Vampire just two examples. More recently, Canadian
author Dacre Stoker has taken up the tale originated by his ancestor,
co-authoring 2009’s Dracula,
the Un-Dead, a direct sequel to the original, and the
just-released Dracul,
a prequel written in part from documents Bram Stoker left behind.

Friday, October 5, 2018

Written by Jon Williams

On October 8, 2003, The
Walking Dead issue #1 hit comic shops everywhere. Coming right on the heels
of the acclaimed movie 28 Days Later, it helped start a
snowball effect to begin the zombie craze that is still building to this day.
Now, The Walking Dead is still going
strong as a comic series, with issue #184 coming out earlier this week, and creator
Robert Kirkman saying the end is still “far away off.” In conjunction with the
fifteenth anniversary of the first issue’s release, October 13 has been
designated as Walking Dead Day. To help your library celebrate with your
patrons, here’s a look at the pop culture phenomenon that The Walking Dead has become.

The namesake television series The Walking Dead premiered,
fittingly enough, on Halloween, October 31, 2010. Like the comic, it centered
on Rick Grimes (Andrew
Lincoln), a small-town sheriff who awakes from a coma to find the hospital
he is in, as well as the world outside, overrun by zombies. His life becomes a
fight for survival as he struggles to figure out what’s going on and search for
other survivors, particularly his family. The show has been a sensation,
breaking viewership records for a cable series, and has gone on through its
various seasons to explore the threat posed by other human survivors,
personified by such memorable villains as the Governor (David
Morrissey) and Negan (Jeffrey
Dean Morgan), as well as the ever-present zombie menace. This Sunday,
October 7, the ninth season debuts, with this being notable as Andrew Lincoln’s
last, as the show will shift its focus to Daryl (Norman
Reedus) and Maggie (Lauren
Cohan) as they attempt to lead the survivors.

With the show’s success, it’s no surprise that it has
spawned a spinoff of its own. Unlike The
Walking Dead, which began more or less with the zombie apocalypse already
underway, Fear
the Walking Dead explores what it was like to experience the world descending
into chaos. Debuting in August of 2015, it follows Madison (Kim
Dickens) and Travis (Cliff
Curtis) as they try desperately to keep their family alive and together.
The fourth season, which just concluded on September 30, brought the two shows
together with the introduction of Morgan, a character originated by Lennie
James in the first season of The
Walking Dead and brought back in season 5. Fear the Walking Dead has been picked up for its own fifth season,
as it and the original show seem poised to continue far into the future.

The Walking Dead
began its life in the comic format, but it has expanded into other areas of
publishing as well. In 2011, the novel Rise
of the Governor brought the backstory of that intriguing villain to
life, and it was followed by The
Road to Woodbury and The
Fall of the Governor Parts 1 and 2
to round out the story arc. Series creator Robert Kirkman teamed up with writer
Jay Bonansinga to tell the Governor’s story, and then Bonansinga continued on
with four more novels: Descent,
Invasion,
Search
and Destroy, and Return
to Woodbury. Fans of the comic series and the show won’t want to miss
these stories that delve into the niches of beloved characters and settings.

With so much content available, and plenty more on the way,
fans of The Walking Dead are
everywhere, and they’ll be looking for ways to celebrate on October 13. Make
sure you have plenty of zombie-related media on your shelves for them to check
out. And for those who just can’t wait, point them toward hoopla, where they
can find Jay
Bonansinga’s audiobooks, as well as the entire comic
series, available with no holds and no waiting.

Friday, September 28, 2018

Written by Jon Williams

Paul McCartney’s latest album, Egypt Station, came out on September
7. It was his first release of new material since 2013’s NEW. As hard as it may be to
believe, based on his iconic career, Egypt
Station was Sir Paul’s first solo release to debut at #1 on Billboard’s
album chart, and the first to attain that position at all in 36 years, since
1982’s Tug of Wargot there more than a month after its release.

Although this is his first new album in five years, he has
been anything but idle in the meantime. In that span he released remastered
editions of his classic albums Venus and Mars and Wings’ At the Speed of Sound (2014), Pipes of Peace and the
aforementioned Tug of War (2015), and
Flowers in the Dirt (2017), as well
as putting together the post-Beatles career-spanning hits collection Pure McCartney. All of this on top
of his constant tour schedule, and it’s hard to believe this man is 76 years
old.

Another project McCartney had a hand in is the upcoming 50th
anniversary re-release of the Beatles’ seminal self-titled ninth album,
familiarly known as “The White Album” due to its plain white album cover with
just the band’s name embossed on it. Originally released as a double album on
November 22, 1968, the new edition will be available on November 9 in two
configurations. A 3-disc
set will include the original album plus the “Esher Demos,” a set of 27
songs recorded acoustically at George Harrison’s home (some of which were
included on Anthology
3). The 6-disc
deluxe edition includes all of that as well as outtakes and demos from the
album’s recording sessions, plus a Blu-ray featuring the original mono mix of
the album, the new stereo mix, and a 5.1 surround-sound mix. This comes on the
heels of last year’s similar anniversary release of Sgt.
Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

And that’s not all that’s on the horizon for fans of the
Beatles and their solo careers. Coming next week, in celebration of what would
have been his 78th birthday on October 9, are new Ultimate Editions
of John Lennon’s classic 1971 album Imagine.
On the strength of its title track, it has proved to be his most popular solo
album. The reissue will include a remastered standard
edition, a 2-disc
edition that includes B-sides and outtakes, and a Super
Deluxe version that explores the evolution of each song through four CDs
and bonus Blu-ray content. In addition, the films Imagine and Gimme Some Truth
have been restored and are being re-released on DVD
and Blu-ray
at the same time. The project was overseen by Yoko Ono, Lennon’s widow and
creative partner.

The Beatles’ popularity continues unabated more than 48
years after they broke up, and their music, both as a band and from their
individual solo careers, truly is a gift that keeps on giving. Your patrons
will be clamouring for the new album from Paul McCartney, as well as these
explorations of the Beatles’ and John Lennon’s classic albums. You can get them
from the links above, and you can SmartBrowse on our website for more timeless
music from these artists (and don’t forget George Harrison and Ringo Starr, who
also have plenty of celebrated solo work).

Friday, September 21, 2018

Written by Jon Williams

Fall begins this weekend. As we close the book on summer and
inch closer to October and the spooky season, it’s entirely fitting that the
new season of American Horror Story
is now in full swing. Subtitled Apocalypse,
the acclaimed show’s eighth season began with a widespread nuclear attack
wiping out much of the world’s population, and then focused in on a small group
of survivors brought together by a mysterious “Cooperative.”

With Apocalpyse, American Horror Story creators Ryan
Murphy and Brad Falchuk are in the midst of their eighth season of acclaimed,
award-winning television, and the show has already been renewed to run at least
through its tenth season. Even outside of this show, they are no stranger to
good, popular television. Murphy created the show Nip/Tuck
in 2003, and met Falchuk while working on it. When it ended, they joined forces
to create the musical sensation Glee,
which ran for six seasons. They created the two-season series Scream
Queens, and they also serve as executive producers for another
anthology series, American
Crime Story, whose first season focused on the O.J. Simpson trial and
whose second season, The Assassination of
Gianni Versace, took home five trophies at this week’s Emmy Awards. They
also created the series 9-1-1
focusing on first responders, currently in its second season.

Television lovers are always looking for good new shows to
binge-watch, and with Halloween right around the corner, American Horror Story is a can’t-miss. The varied storylines and
incredible performances are sure to keep viewers coming back for more. Find all
previous
seasons on our website so your patrons can get caught up with all the
horrific happenings that have led into this season as well as whatever the show
has in store for the future.

Friday, September 14, 2018

Written by Jon Williams

On August 31, the entire eight-episode first season of Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan became available
for streaming. This new iteration brings the character to life for the first
time since 2014, and to the small screen for the first time ever. Positive
critical and viewer reactions are already rolling in, and the series has
already been renewed for a second season.

This time around Ryan is played by John
Krasinski, as the series focuses on the early days of the burgeoning CIA
agent’s career. Krasinski has been in the pop culture spotlight lately as the
star, director, and co-writer of the hit horror flick A
Quiet Place, which came out earlier this year. He is probably even
better known for his breakout role as Jim Halpert on The
Office, which he played for the entirety of the comedy series’
nine-season run. The rest of Jack Ryan’s
main cast is rounded out by Wendell
Pierce, Abbie
Cornish, Ali
Suliman, and Dina
Shihabi.

The show may be new, but the character of Jack Ryan is
anything but. He originally came to be in Tom Clancy’s 1984 The
Hunt for Red October. The novel tells how Jack Ryan, at this point a
young CIA analyst, helps to ensure the defection of a grizzled Soviet navy
captain with a devastating new submarine. The book became a bestseller
following huge critical reaction, including an endorsement from U.S. President
Ronald Reagan. Ryan has since featured in more than twenty novels, including such
titles as Clear
and Present Danger, Executive
Orders, Command
Authority, the recently released Line
of Sight, and the forthcoming Oath
of Office. Sadly, author Tom
Clancy passed away in 2013, but the mantle of writing the Ryan character
has been taken on by fellow authors Mark
Greaney, Mike
Maden, and Marc
Cameron.

And that’s where Jack Ryan’s screen presence left off, until
the new streaming series debuted two weeks ago. As more and more people
discover the show, Tom Clancy’s audiobooks and the past movies are sure to be
in demand. Use the links above to find the materials, or SmartBrowse ‘Jack Ryan’
on our website for a full list of audiobooks we carry in the series.

Friday, August 24, 2018

Written by Jon Williams

The music world lost a legend last week with the passing of
the Queen of Soul, Aretha
Franklin. She was 76.

While Aretha’s mother passed at a young age, her father was
a well-known minister, giving her exposure to influential gospel singers of the
time, including Mahalia
Jackson and Clara
Ward, both of whom served as role models. Aretha began touring and
performing with her father when she was just 12, and her first single was
released when she was 14. She stuck with gospel until she was 18, at which time
she moved to New York with hopes of breaking into the pop music world. Her
first secular album, Aretha: With the Ray
Bryant Combo, was released early in 1961, just before her 20th
birthday.

The rest, as they say, is history. She went on to have one
of the great careers of all time, recording such iconic, instantly recognizable
hits as “Respect,” “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman,” and “I Say a
Little Prayer,” among so many others. In 2008, music authority Rolling Stone named her the greatest
singer of all time. With a career that spanned more than five decades, her
influence is legendary, inspiring generations of singers and musicians with her
talent and powerful performances. Some of these notable names include Whitney
Houston, Beyonce,
and Jennifer
Hudson, who Franklin herself chose to play her in an upcoming biopic.

We join the music and pop culture worlds in mourning the
monumental loss of Aretha Franklin. SmartBrowse her name on our website to find
a number of collections of her music, as well as a few related audiobooks and
films (including her incredible performance in the classic comedy The
Blues Brothers). Patrons can also check out her wonderful music,
including a broad collection of original albums, on hoopla
digital.